


Stick and String

by stars_inthe_sky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Character Study, Drabble, Feels, Gen, Headcanon, Mostly Gen, Natasha Romanov's Arrow Necklace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4109572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If it's worth caring about, no matter how impossible you think it is—you take the shot.</i> (Did she buy the necklace or did he?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stick and String

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this Tumblr post](http://shipperwolf1.tumblr.com/post/81843826495/did-she-buy-the-necklace-or-did-he-did-she-buy) by [shipperwolf1](http://shipperwolf1.tumblr.com/), a good year after the fact.

She bought the necklace. 

If anyone asks, it’s because it made her smile when she saw it. Or because it was on sale. Or because she bought it as a present but liked it too much to give it away. Or because, though she’s not an archer, she is a bit like an arrow—flying straight and true when pointed in the right direction. 

* * *

The real answer she doesn’t tell anyone, including Clint, although when he sees the necklace, she thinks he might have guessed. But he doesn’t ask, and she never wears it around him again, just in case he guessed wrong. She only pretends to know everything, and she’s not sure how to explain this well.

The real answer is that when he first brought her in from the cold, when she first walked out into the world as a full-fledged S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and a free woman both, Clint Barton was waiting with a friendly smile and a cup of coffee—two sugars, a pump of vanilla syrup, and as much skim milk as can fit in the cup. (She never does find out how he knew how she would like it; it’s her first-ever cup of Starbucks and the only thing she orders when given the choice later.) 

The real answer is that she thinks she might’ve fallen a little bit in love with him over every staticky voicemail, after Budapest and the belly-deep crawl out of hell that followed, through monsters and magic and nothing they were ever trained for but could always handle together.

The real answer is that all of that happens, and she tries to figure out  _why_  it matters, and then she meets his wife.

* * *

It’s the first time she makes a friend—a real friend, not just an ally or an asset or an acquaintance—and Laura Barton isn’t someone who keeps a ledger, not her own or anyone else’s. She’s easy to like and complicated to love, not unlike the man she married. And when Natasha meets their kid—just the one at that point—it’s the first time a toddler looks at her and  _smiles_ . She’s not a threat or a competitor or a harbinger of a quick death; she’s someone’s Aunt Nat. 

It’s the first time Natasha understands  _who_  she fights for, and thus  _why_. She’d grown up among soldiers and scientists, fighting for an impossible ideal, not the faceless families that comprised it. And S.H.I.E.L.D. did mean freedom, but it also meant bureaucrats and undercover missions and colleagues who could protect themselves even from the likes of her. Natasha has spent a lifetime prying people apart, from the inside and from each other, but, visiting the Barton farm, it’s the first time she understands what it means to put people together, and to want to help them stay that way.

It’s also the first time she realizes she’s not in love with Clint. That there are many, many reasons she doesn’t want his life, or his wife’s. She doesn’t envy their family, and she doesn’t begrudge them what they’ve been able to build. Her life going forward is what she makes it, and though she didn’t have those choices before, she does now.

It’s the first time that Natasha realizes that she has a purpose, not just to fight but to fight  _for_. Not just for Laura and Cooper and the ones that come later, but for every other family, every other child, every other person living in and making the most of this world that Natasha is only beginning to claim her place in. 

It’s the first time, in short, that she’s flying straight and true of her own accord.

* * *

When Natasha sees the necklace on display during a rare trip to the mall, it is on sale, it does make her smile, and she originally does plan to give it to Laura, the punchline to an endless stream of Cupid jokes.

But, as the saleslady gives the chain a quick shine before slipping the piece into its little satin bag, Natasha decides she’s keeping the necklace for herself. It’s not really about Clint and what she might, in another life, want from him. It’s about what she, in this life, wants to aim for, and how and who and why.

* * *

So, she buys the necklace, and she wears it out of the store.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from Matt Fraction and David Aja's _Hawkeye_.
> 
> I love [red_b_rackham](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham) and everything she chooses to be.


End file.
